Re: First draft of PG 19 release notes

On Sun, Nov 8, 2026 at 8:16 AM Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 7, 2026 at 08:20:35PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 7, 2026 at 06:04:48PM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> > > My understanding (position?) is that upgrading from 16.5 to 18.6; I'd
> expect to
> > > need to upgrade to 16.15 and read release notes for 16.6-16.15; then
> read the
> > > notes for 17.0 and 18.0 when I go from 16.15 to 18.6. I shouldn't
> need to read
> > > anything else in the 17 release nor the fixes applied to 18 for
> versions I
> > > never installed. I'll never see that reindex twice.
> >
> > You need to read all of 17 because if you are upgrading from 11 to 19.7
> > there might be reindex needs in PG 12-16.
> >
> > > We don't support upgrading from an unsupported release, nor into an
> unsupported
> > > one. And the fixes that hit a major version only matter if you'd
> already been
> > > running that version otherwise those same fixes would have appeared on
> your
> > > supported minor release notes.
> >
> > Oh, I guess if you are always on supported releases you might be able to
> > skip 17, good point.
>
> Actually, you do need to read all the 17.X and 18.x release notes
> because while some of those items are backpatched to 16.X, others are
> specific to the 17.X and 18.X branches. This is the crux of the problem
> --- that we mix backpatched and major-version-specific items in the same
> release notes. I see no way of improving that.
>
>
If the action needs to be taken post pg_upgrade too, and not just during a
minor release update, it should be added into the N.0 migration section.
We can limit what we put there by assuming all such migration actions in
minor releases of earlier versions have already been performed. I would
welcome an example of something that meets this criteria.

My other, not mutually exclusive, idea is to put 'Migrations' in the E1
position of the appendix and remove migration from the individual version
sections. This reduces greatly the number of links to follow that all end
up just saying the same thing anyway (in the migration section anyway).

David J.